


tell me a piece of your history (that you're proud to call your own)

by ohmygodwhy



Series: come doused in mud, soaked in bleach [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Organized Crime, dugan is lowkey a dad/older brother and u cant tell me otherwise, kind of?????, this turned out sadder than expected tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 05:24:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8237612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/pseuds/ohmygodwhy
Summary: He finds the kid when he's eleven. Needless to say, the Director isn’t thrilled when Dugan shows up a few days later with the scrappy kid who’d been taking their money. (or: dugan picks up a stray, some bad things happen, and it takes a village to raise a scrappy smartass)





	

**Author's Note:**

> alternate title for this fic: i have no clue where this came from but i spent way too long on it pls say it wasn't in vain
> 
> i just???? have a bunch of feelings abt lowkey big bro/dad dum dum okay???? for this au in particular it turned out more dad-ish but in canon i get that big bro feel u feel?? pls just talk to me abt these boys.
> 
> (also pls do read the tags, there's heavy reference to sexual abuse & it's effects in the later half)

 

 

He finds the kid when he’s eleven.

It was like this: Dugan had been sent to take care of him. Get him out of their hair. Someone had been stealing from them—mostly money they stored in the empty warehouses near the edge of town, god knows how—just enough to be bothersome, or at least something that could become bothersome. 

They hadn’t known it was a _kid,_ though. And he _is_ a kid, all knobby elbows and thick dark hair sticking up in tufts, standing small and shaking and defiant under Dugan’s gaze. He’d caught him sneaking out through the back, a little battered backpack stuffed full of their cash, bills fluttering out when he ran. The kid was fast, but Dugan was faster. 

“You know who you’ve been stealing from, kid?” he asks gruffly. 

“Ain’t stealing from nobody,” the kid shoots back, tiny hands gripping the shitty kitchen knife he’d yanked out of his pocket on the run, “The money was just here.” 

Dugan snorts. “Money don’t just lie around, it always belongs to someone.”

The kid stares him down, “And this belongs to you?”

“Some of it.”

“Then why the hell’d you leave it here? You ain’t usin’ it.”

“Not now,” he agrees, “But we will.”

The kid frowns, “What if I need it more than you do?”

“You’re still stealin’,” he says, and could laugh at the irony of the whole thing if he wasn’t trying to be intimidating.

“So what, you gonna _kill_ me then?” the kid says boldly, “Take your money back?”

“I—“ Dugan pauses, because _yes_ , he thinks, _that’s what I came here to do, to clean up this mess._

But that was before they—before he, because he knew some of the higher ups wouldn’t think twice either way—knew that it was a kid. A kid who has that wariness Dugan knows too well, the uncertainty of not knowing when you’ll find your next meal, the look of someone who’s been kicked and won’t hesitate to kick back, even if they’ll lose. 

“What’s your name, kid?” he asks instead. 

That puts him on guard immediately. “What’s it to you?”

Dugan shrugs, “Nothin’,” he lies, “Don’t matter to me if you die without a name.” 

Big blue eyes widen at that and the kid’s breath catches. (Dugan and the name behind him inspire fear in a lot of people, but something tightens in his chest at this little slip of a thing looking at him like that.)

“…Bucky.” he says eventually.

“What kinda name is that?”

“My kinda name.” Bucky says firmly, tilting his chin like he’s daring him to make fun of him. 

“Alright then, Bucky,” he sticks out his hand, “Name’s Dugan.” 

Bucky stares at the hand warily, “What kinda name is _that?_ ” he echoes.

“My kinda name.” 

Bucky’s mouth twitches a little, and he puts his tiny hand in Dugan’s and gives it a firm shake. 

“You gonna kill me, then?” he asks again, “If you are, you should at least lock this place up better so no one else has to get killed.”

“Nah,” Dugan says, considering, “Couldn’t kill ya if I wanted to—I’m fresh outta bullets.”

“You came to kill me and you didn’t check to see if you had any bullets left?” the kid sounds incredulous.

Dugan puts his hands up, “Hey, it’s late and I was in a hurry.”

The kid huffs a soft laugh, “You’re a dum-dum.” he mumbles, peering up at him through his hair, and that’s the moment that Dugan decides: I’m keeping him.

“Guess I am,” Dugan concedes, feeling unreasonably proud of that little laugh. “But hey, you hungry? ‘Cause I’m starving, and you got more than enough money to treat us to a nice midnight snack, yeah?”

That seems to throw the kid in for a loop, “You don’t want it back?” his voice is small, hands gripping the straps of his backpack like he’s preparing to run again.

Dugan gives what he hopes is a reassuring smile, “Nah. It’s like you said, I ain’t using it. Director won’t notice a little missing.” 

And that is definitely a lie, but Dugan will deal with that later. Right now, he’s gonna get this boy some food, and maybe a bed, and worry about the rest of it tomorrow.

 

The kid’s name is James (but “only my mama called me that, and she ain’t around no more, so no one calls me that,”) and he eats like hasn’t had a proper meal in a week. Dugan lets him, lets him order whatever he wants from his favorite 24-hour diner and lets him have the other half of Dugan’s food he keeps eyeing.

“So, kiddo,” he says once the kid is licking the bowl for any remaining ice cream (and his eyes had lit up like the goddamn Fourth of July when Dugan had mentioned dessert), “You got anywhere to be?” 

His little nose scrunches as he sets the bowl down, “Not really.” 

“Then how d’you feel about room service and a continental breakfast?” 

James—Bucky’s—eyes narrow suspiciously, “I ain’t _stupid._ My mama taught me not to follow any weird dudes home.”

Dugan bites back a grin; the kid’s smart. “You followed me here.”

“This ain’t your house—unless you don’t got one.” 

He does grin this time, “I got one; wasn’t planning on taking you there. As I see it, you don’t have a place to stay. All I’m offering is a bed for the night.”

Bucky withdraws, wary and suspicious and so so hopeful when he asks, “Why?” and Dugan _understands._

“I’ve been where you’ve been, buddy.” he says simply. He still doesn’t relax, but some of the tension leaks out of the kid’s drawn up shoulders.

“You,” he swallows, “You won’t do nothin’?”

Dugan’s hit with a wave of something and he tries very hard not to think of what the kid means by ‘nothing’ and who’s ever done that nothing.

“I won’t do nothin’.” he agrees.

“…You don’t want nothin’ back? ‘Cause I don’t have nothin’—‘cept your money, if you want that back.” 

“Nah, kid,” he says; he can’t remember the last time he heard himself speak so softly. He’s never had a reason. “I don’t want anything back.” 

He sits back and lets Bucky assess him, look him up and down and search his face for whatever it is he’s looking for. He bites his lip, considering, and after a long moment he says, “Okay, sure. But you better not be lying, you dum-dum.”

Dugan smiles, “Wouldn’t dream of it, kid.”

 

The Director isn’t thrilled when Dugan shows up a few days later with a scrappy kid who’d been taking their money.

“Weren’t you supposed to clean up the mess?” he asks sharply. Bucky’s in the hallway outside, talking shyly with Jones.

“I did,” Dugan replies, “He’s not taking our money anymore.” 

Fury sighs, opens his mouth to say something, but Dugan cuts him off, “He’s a _kid_ , for god’s sake. Come on, boss, I ain’t killing a kid.”

“I get it, you don’t have to. But you don’t have to _adopt_ him either, those aren’t your only two options.” 

“What’s my third one? With all due respect, sir, I leave him out there and he’ll be dead within the year anyway.” 

Fury’s mouth is a thin line, “Then what are you suggesting?” he asks, even though he already knows exactly what he’s suggesting. 

It’s not like this is uncommon—the recruits that aren’t born into it are usually found on the streets, angry enough at the Starks or the police or whatever landed them on those streets—but no one’s picked up a kid in a long while. 

Dugan has no illusions as to what he’ll be dragging the boy into. SHIELD ain’t no place to be raised, and Dugan’s never taken a crack at raising before, but he does know it’s a hell of a lot better than dying alone in some alley. 

Fury gives one of his long-suffering sighs, rubs his eyes with a gloved hand. “Fine,” he says, and Dugan’s almost sure he heard him wrong, “ _But_ , you better keep your boy in line. SHIELD’s no place for strays.”

Dugan could comment on how he himself was pretty much a stray and he turned out just fine, but instead he stands straight with a thankful, “Yes, sir.”

“Now get the hell out of my office. And do your damn job next time.” 

He promises to do his damn job next time, gets the hell out of his office, and to the kid he says: “Welcome to the family.”

 

The Commandos take a liking to him quick as goddamn lightning. Even _Monty_ takes a liking to him, which is honestly a little incredible. 

The kid, understandably, takes a bit longer to warm up to them. But he does, eventually, won over by good food and soft beds and the crazy French bastard offering to teach him how to make a homemade grenade. He fits in like a puzzle piece.

When he meets Natasha—a spirited little red head a year or two older than him, born into the business—for the first time, she looks him up and down, tilts her head a little, and throws a knife at him. 

Dugan’s too slow to react, but the kid manages to catch it, only fumbling a little bit before chucking it back. She catches it, flips it, and honest to god grins at him like she’s won the damn lottery instead of giving Dugan a heart attack, which. Is even more incredible than Monty liking a kid, honestly. Dugan is properly scared. 

She offers to teach him how to “use that knife in your pocket the right way.” He says that he already knows how to use it, and she smirks and says “alright, but I can show you how to throw them.” 

Bucky eyes do that Fourth-of-July-light-up-thing again, and he glances at Dugan like he’s looking for permission to say yes, which—surprises him, and kind of scares him, because he’s never had kids asking him permission for anything before and what the hell has he gotten into, but Bucky is blinking up at him, completely unaware of the crisis he’s in, so he says “yeah, sure, but don’t go stabbin’ yourself in the eye, okay?” 

Bucky grins at him like Dugan’s offered him the keys to the city, and if that makes some part of him all warm and happy, that’s no one’s business but his own. 

And Jesus, this whole thing was probably a bad idea. A bad damn idea, he thinks when he drags himself and Morita’s ass home from the latest mess they had to clean up, HYDRA blood on his shirt, exhausted and wrung out, and Bucky sits straight up in bed and sees his shirt and looks so damn scared. 

For a horrible moment, Dugan thinks it’s him he’s scared of, until the kid scrambles off the bed and runs up to him and puts a tiny shaking hand over the red stain and goes “please don’t die.”

“Wh—oh,” his tired brain takes a minute to make connections “Oh. No, I ain’t dying, kid.”

“But you’re bleeding,” he says, big eyes open wide, “You’re bleeding, and people die when they bleed from their chest.”

“Not alw—“

“They do,” Bucky insists, desperate, “My mama did, and Becca did—they bled too much and they died and now you’re gonna die too—please don’t die, Dum Dum, you can’t die.”

And shit: Bucky’s crying now, tiny hands fisted in Dugan’s shirt, and he’s never talked about his mama other than the fact that she’s not here anymore and now he knows _why._

“Hey,” he says, sinking carefully to his knees so he’s not towering over him, “Hey, didn’t you hear me? I ain’t dying. It’s not even mine—I ain’t even bleeding, see?” 

“…It’s not yours?” the kid repeats, voice breaking.

“Nah, it’s not mine. I’m fine, kid, I’m okay.” 

Bucky still looks scared, “Who’s is it then?”

Dugan pauses, “A bad man’s. A really bad person.”

“A bad person?” he repeats again. “What kinda bad person?” 

“The kind the world’s probably better off without. Doing bad things to good people.” 

“But don’t you do bad things, too?” the kid’s calmed down a bit, but his hands are still firmly attached to Dugan’s shirt, and most of his weight is resting against him. He asks the question without judgement.

“Well,” he starts, takes a moment to think through his answer for once; this conversation feels important, “We do. I do. See, the world is run by people who don’t always care about the little guys, and sometimes you gotta work outside the system to get what you need. Lotta people been cheated by all the big men runnin’ the show. So mostly, we do the bad things to help the people who’ve been cheated.”

“Mostly?”

Dugan shrugs, “We ain’t the only ones working outside the law. Not everyone’s out for the same thing. Sometimes they do bad things just because they can, just to hurt other people, or to help themselves.”

“Like my stepdad? And the people who killed my mama?” his voice is very small.

Dugan’s heart clenches. This is the first time he’s heard about any stepdad, but “Yeah,” he says, “Like them.”

“So, what, you kill bad guys? What d’you need all the money for, then?” because his boy is always sharp. 

“Money ain’t a bad thing,” he points out. The kind of weapons they use are expensive, he doesn’t add, and a little extra to bail someone out is always helpful. The cops around here aren’t too fond of them or their heroic escapades, and the shit they do is technically illegal. 

That earns him a weak smile. 

“You guys are like heroes or somethin’,” he says, “Like batman.”

“What, no superman?” he teases, swallowing back the weird emotion he feels at the kid’s declaration, “That’s usually the go-to hero comparison.”

Bucky makes a face, “Superman is lame—his weakness is a _rock_. Batman doesn’t even have powers, but he still gets as much done. And his suit is cooler.” 

Dugan snorts, “I think my suit’s the coolest.”

Bucky giggles, “You just have a weird hat and a gross mustache.” 

_“Gross?”_ Dugan laughs, “If anyone’s mustache is gross, it’s _Monty’s.”_

Bucky laughs again, eyes scrunching up in the corners, and it’s one of the best sounds Dugan’s ever heard. 

 

Slowly, miraculously, and with a lot of help from everyone else, Bucky grows up. 

Dugan shows him how to punch right, Gabe, that goddamn college boy, introduces him to his fancy literature and, along with Frenchie (who knows how to blow anything up in seven different ways and happily shows Bucky), tries to teach him French. Monty tells him wild British War Stories about jumping out of planes and shit and Morita teaches him morse code. 

Little Natasha grows up right along with him, shows him how to throw knives and all the fancy ballerina-karate shit she’s learning. Barton likes showing off his weird affinity for archery—which he’s definitely good at, but can’t really do anything with. Wilson tells them stories about flying through the goddamn sky and rescuing people like superman— _batman,_ Bucky insists. 

When they bring in Wanda a few years later, freshly grieving and angry and powerful, Bucky sits down and offers to braid her hair and tells her about Becca—his sister, Dugan’s learned, the one who died with his mom. She ends up crying into his chest, and he ends up murmuring quiet comforts and blinking tears of his own out of his eyes. Dugan is strangely proud of him, of this amazing kid. 

After that, he thinks Wanda sees him as some kinda little brother—never mind that he’s the older one for once. Hell, he’s everyone’s little brother. Dugan is so fucking grateful for that—no way in hell he woulda been able to do this by himself, no matter how much he cared about the kid. It takes a village to raise a scrappy smartass, he supposes. 

Rumlow, though. Rumlow doesn’t like him very much, for some ungodly reason. He offers to spar with him when Bucky is just short of seventeen and he’s at least three years older. He doesn’t hold back. To be fair, neither does Bucky—he gets a few good punches in and cleanly breaks the asshole’s nose, but he’s hardly a match for Rumlow. 

Wanda ends up bursting into Dugan’s room, yelling about how “ _he’s hitting too hard and he won’t stop—he’s gonna kill him he won’t stop he won’t stop”._

Dugan runs, heart pounding in his ears, throws the gym door open, yanks Rumlow off of Bucky (small and gasping and bleeding on the floor) and punches his asshole face with an anger he didn’t know he had in him. 

“What the _fuck_ is your problem?” he snarls. Rumlow is too busy clutching at his jaw to respond, but Dugan couldn’t care less, turning his attention to Bucky.

“Shit, kid,” he breaths, sinking down and feeling frantically for a pulse—chokes on his breath when he finds one. He runs amazingly steady hands through the kid’s hair— they come back clean, so no terrible concussion. He can’t say the same about his nose, and his face is gonna be an awful mask of bruises in a few hours, and “Fuck,” he cusses, “God,” and then to Wanda, who’s hovering worriedly behind him: “Go find Gabe—or Wilson—someone who can help.”

She nods frantically, shooting one last glance at Bucky, and then she’s gone, the sound of her footsteps get fainter and fainter until they disappear. 

Secretary Pierce calls them in later, after Dugan storms Fury’s office and goes off in a way he hasn’t in years. 

Secretary Pierce isn’t officially a head of their organization—he’s an important political figure; no one from that side of his life knows he’s involved with them at all, and there’s a bullet reserved for anyone who has any ideas about telling them about it. He doesn’t have any official power over them, but he has money, and he provides most of the money they use to keep the whole place up and running. He’s an old friend of Fury, allegedly. Personally, Dugan doesn’t know how to feel about him. There’s just something _off_ about him.

Something off about him when a week after the fact, he stands in front of both Rumlow and Bucky (and Dugan, who insisted he be in the room with them, just in case that jackass tried to start anything again) and gives a careful speech about all the pieces in the machine of SHIELD, and how they all have a place in it, and if two of the cogs don’t turn the right way the whole thing will fall apart and all that. Personally, Dugan just wants to see Rumlow get chewed out.

Pierce actually takes it a step further than that. After he’s done, he turns sharply and backhands the bastard hard across the face. He doesn’t fall, but he does stumble. Dugan only catches a glimpse of Bucky’s surprised face, before he’s stumbling himself, the sound of the slap ringing against his bruised skin. 

Dugan bites back something sharp, swallows it down because yelling at the Secretary won’t turn out well for any of them. 

Seemingly sensing Dugan’s anger, he turns to him and says, “You have to discourage this type of behavior before it has time to grow,” sympathetically, like Bucky’s just as much to blame as Rumlow. 

Instead of saying so, Dugan nods. Glances at Bucky, who’s standing tall again, despite of the bright pink mark on his cheek. 

Pierce looks back at Bucky too. Studies him, looks him up and down in a way that makes Dugan’s skin crawl, before he tilts his head to the side and says, “Son, how do you feel about a mission of your own?”

 

Honestly, Dugan should have expected this. No one lives at SHIELD HQ for free. You have to put work in to get the reward. Dugan understands that, of course he does. Natasha had gone on her first ‘mission’ a few months ago. 

It’s just. Bucky isn’t made for this, he thinks—which is probably ridiculous, considering he’s literally lived here for half a decade—but he just _not_ made for it. Part of that is probably Dugan’s fault—he was sheltering him from the worst of it. He definitely made sure not to show up with blood all over his clothes again, and rarely talked about field work with him, no matter how much the others did. 

For all he’s sheltered him, though, the kid seems excited about the prospect of being a part of it all. Not his own mission, not yet—he’ll be going with Natasha, nothing big, getting some money from one place to another before the cops close in on it. No reason to engage anyone, even less of a reason to fight, but Dugan can’t help but worry.

(And Jesus Christ, this was never supposed to happen, he thinks. He had no idea keeping a kid would leave him with a soft spot the size of fucking Texas and the ability to worry about everything.)

It goes fine. Bucky comes back with the excited grin on his face, and launches into a story about a car chase that Natasha cuts in to embellish with little details every few minutes. As much as he tries to stop it, his enthusiasm is contagious.

“Good job, kiddo,” he grins, clapping him on the back, “Welcome to the damn team, get ready for the ride of your life.” 

 

By the time he’s nineteen, Bucky’s killed three people.

The first time, the kid had come home and stared at Dugan for a long heavy moment before burying his head in his chest and breathing like a dying man. 

The second time, Dugan was there. A Hydra ambush, chaos that resulted in six people shooting at each other. One of their own went out, the kid got one of the Hydra bastards right in the head, and Dugan took care of the other two. Bucky doesn’t cry after this one, but then again, neither does Dugan. Scum didn’t deserve that much anyways.

Third time was covering Steve Goddamn Rogers’ ass. 

When Steve Goddamn Rogers was picked up—by fuckin’ Fury, who had been _so against_ strays eight years ago—the two of them, the kid and the new kid, clicked, just like that. One minute they’re sizing each other up and the next they’re joking and throwing playful insults back and forth like they’ve been friends for years. 

Bucky looks at Steve Goddamn Rogers like he’s hung the stars in the sky, and _oh,_ Dugan thinks watching the two of them steal food off each others’ plates, oh shit. Oh shit, because Steve Goddamn Rogers is So Goddamn Oblivious it’s almost painful to watch. 

Until they go on that mission together, the one where Bucky saves Rogers’ ass and Rogers saves Bucky’s too, apparently. _Then_ —then Rogers is still just as goddamn oblivious, but now he’s the one looking at the kid like he’s the center of the goddamn galaxy. 

The kid is almost twenty. He’s legal, he’s perfectly capable of crushing on and being crushed on by whoever the hell he wants. The things is, he’s been eternally dubbed _‘the kid’_ in Dugan’s mind, and that’s not changing anytime soon. 

(He wonders if this is what’s it’s like seeing your kid—your younger sibling maybe? he’s not sure exactly, because he’s never had a younger brother or a kid—and realizing that they’ve grown up. That they’re nearly an adult. That they may not need to you much longer.)

Also, there’s the fact that he knows—he _knows_ —that Bucky feels with everything he has. He loves Natasha and Wanda and Jones and Dugan and everyone else with everything he has, and if this Rogers boy lets him, he’ll love him with everything he has, too. And then this Rogers boy will have the power to destroy him, to fuck him up in a real bad way that’ll hit him with everything he has. 

So he keeps his eyes open, and he watches, and he doesn’t know if he hopes they get over themselves and just admit they wanna kiss, or that they never do, and the kid moves on. He can’t quite bring himself to feel guilty about that second one.

 

He doesn’t keep his eyes open enough. 

He holds his boy tight against him, hand braced against the back of his head, and they both shake. 

He doesn’t keep his eyes open enough, and by the time the kid is nearly twenty one his time is so split between Steve and missions and spending far too much time in Pierce’s office giving reports of those missions that Dugan barely sees him outside of field work and the occasional takeout night. 

The kid hardly needs takeout anymore, though. He’s taking Steve out for some fancy dinner or movie every other night, and who knows where he’s getting the money for it—and he has a fancy new watch he got sometime around his twentieth birthday, a nice new suit he got a year earlier, the kind of alcohol Dugan would give his left nut for back when he turned eighteen. 

He doesn’t know where he’s getting these things, but he knows he didn’t steal any of it or Fury would find out somehow and be all up on his case about it, so he figures the kid’s picked up some extra jobs or something. 

Once, Dugan asks him about it, says, “You get yourself a real job or somethin’?”

“Hm?” the kid asks absently, looking at the TV but not really watching it.

“Said did you get yourself a real job? You been lookin’ real fancy these days, y’know? Like the watch by the way.”

Bucky does something weird with his eyes—they dart and blink a few times before settling in with the rest of his face’s careful lazy smile, “Thanks,” he says, leans back on the couch and turns back to the show, and that’s that. 

He hasn’t answered the question, but Dugan lets that go, too. 

Take out happens less and less, dinners with Rogers turn into movie dates or invitations to fancy parties and one night Rogers leads an extremely drunk Bucky into Dugan’s room, with an apologetic smile and a “he’s really out of it.”

“Ain’t out of it,” Bucky slurs, arms wrapped firmly around Rogers’ neck, body plastered to the poor boy’s chest “ _C’mon,_ Steve, I c’n make it _real_ good, c’mon Stevie, I wanna make it good for you,” 

Dugan takes pity on Rogers and carefully dislodges Bucky from him. The kid stumbles over his own feet, grips Dugan’s arms to steady himself and giggles. 

“Jesus, how much did he have?” 

Rogers shrugs guiltily, “Too much, probably. Sorry. I would have him stay with me, but he’s…” Drunk, suggestible, unable to consent. For realizing that, at least, Dugan’s grateful for Rogers.

Dugan grunts in agreement, too focused on keeping the kid upright to pay attention to Rogers’ continued apology and exit. 

Eventually, he gives up and lets the kid lean on him as he drags him to the bed, Bucky whining all the way. 

“No, Steve, come back, I can make it good—I can be good enough, I really can, I promise—“ he flops gracelessly onto the bed, groaning, “Ugh, does he think I can’t be good enough?”

Dugan rolls his eyes, “I’m sure he thinks you’d be great, probably even better _sober,_ though.” he says pointedly, pulling off the kid’s shoes.

Bucky just grins, eyes hazy, “Y’think so?” he drawls.

“Sure, kid,” he leans up to get the kid’s jacket off. He shrugs out of it clumsily, and grabs at Dugan’s arm when he pulls back. 

“You ain’t jus’ saying that to make me feel better, right?”

“Hm?”

“That I’d be—" he sniffs, “That I could be good?”

There’s something about the way he says it that sets off vague warning bells in his head.

“Rogers would think so.”

“But would _you_?” Bucky asks again, hazy eyes searching his face for something Dugan isn’t sure of. Whatever it is he finds, the kid sinks into the bed, hands sliding down Dugan’s arms. Bucky swallows, “You been real good t’ me, all this time,” he slurs, “I can—I can make it up to you, if y’want.”

Dugan pulls back like he’s been burned, shocked. Bucky pushes himself up too, blinking at him in something like confusion.

“I ain’t ever done anything to pay you back, and,” he rubs his eyes, “And that ain’t good business practice, y’know? So—so if you want—“ 

Dugan finally finds his voice, “N-no,” he says, “What? No, kid, no, what’re you talking about? I—“

“I can make it good,” he says again, sounding anxious, “You can cover my face ‘f you want—or—whatever y’want—I can be good, I promise, I can make it up—”

“Stop,” he says, mostly to stop the horrible pleading in his voice, so fucking confused when the kid flinches back at that, “Don’t say shit like that, Bucky—James—what’re you doing, kid?” 

The kid opens his mouth, shuts it, like he doesn’t know himself.

“M’sorry,” his voice is so goddamn small, he shrinks in on himself and looks so goddamn lost. 

“Don’t be—it’s fine, kid, it’s okay, just—go to bed, alright? Get some rest.”

Bucky blinks at him, nods and twists himself into a ball on the bed. 

Dugan stands, confused and vaguely afraid, until Bucky’s breaths level out. What the _hell_ was that? 

He takes a few steps back into the couch and sits down heavily. _God,_ has—has Dugan done something to imply that he wanted—that Bucky had to—to _pay him back?_ God.

Dugan sits, and he watches Bucky breathe, and wonders what the hell he’s missed. 

And he’s missed a lot, missed so damn much when a few months later Bucky drops on his way up the stairs. Just straight up collapses, Dugan barely stops him from falling down the goddamn stairs, twisting and catching him just in time. 

And the kid is so light, he notices with a started, so much bonier than he remembers him being the last time they hugged, what, a few weeks ago? Longer? Bucky had been twitchy about touching him, about touching Steve, even, and he was suddenly so goddamn small. 

Laying him out on the bed pushes sleeves up, dark bruises on his wrists, on his forearms— Dugan’s budding terror as he feels carefully for any more hurts on the kid’s body and bruises on what he can see of the kid’s hips, dark dark fingerprint indents on his skin and on his wrists and forearms like he’s been held down and—god, Dugan’s gonna be sick, he gonna kill someone. 

It is nothing compared to the way the kid, his kid, looks at him when he wakes up and Dugan scrapes out a helpless “I didn’t know.” 

Bucky goes from confusion to realization to fear to shame _so much goddamn shame_ he can’t seem to look him in the eye, gripping the knees of his pants so tight his knuckles are turning white. 

“I didn’t know,” he tries again, willing Bucky to please look at him, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, kid, I didn’t know.” 

Bucky does look at him then, and he looks so tired. He holds his gaze for a few long moments, before he kinda just. Gives up. Slumps forwards into Dugan’s chest just as Dugan brings his hands up to catch him. 

It’s several more moments until he can bring himself to ask, “Who? Who the _hell_ —?” did this? touched you? hurt you? 

Bucky’s shakes his head at the question, gripping the back of Dugan’s shirt. 

“Please, kid,” Dugan whispers, “You gotta tell me.”

Bucky whimpers into his chest, and says, eventually, very very quietly: “Secretary,”

Dugan’s heart fucking skips a beat, _“Pierce?”_

The kid _sobs_ at the name, that filthy creep, and fuck, Dugan’s angry, he’s so goddamn angry and he’s terrified and he doesn’t wanna know but he has to know so he can’t stop himself from asking “how long?” _how long have I not seen it how much have I missed?_

Bucky’s shoulder blades dig into Dugan’s forearm, and he chokes, “Bouta—abouta year after my—first mission?” like the words hurt him, they cut Dugan like one of Natasha’s knives “Eighteenth birthday—gave me that—that fancy liquor, because I—he said I did _‘_ good.’”

“Oh, god,” Dugan breathes, because all the signs were right fucking there, he should've know, he should've realized that night, should’ve realized in that goddamn diner all those years ago.

“Why didn’t—?” Why didn’t you tell me? he wants to ask. But no, that’s not fair, Dugan brought him in, brought him into this, he should’ve looked out for him, he should’ve known. It’s been _years,_ his boy has been hurting for _years_ , and he _should’ve fucking known._

Either way, the kid still answers, “Scared, I was scared—stepdad all over again, and—no one woulda believed—no one would’ve—“ he has to stop to catch his breath.

“Fuck,” Dugan chokes, “I’m so sorry, I’m so _fucking_ sorry.”

He holds his boy tight against him, hand braced against the back of his head, and they both shake. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> a single comment can save a life


End file.
